A Liberating Penchant for Heels

I love Saturday mornings. I never have anything to do until later in the day, which means I get to just sit around my lovely old apartment and drink coffee in my pajamas. A friend of mine lent me Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence,and I have yet to start it because I’ve been reading other things… I’m not one of those people who reads multiple books at the same time (I suppose I could develop the talent, but it’s also something of a rule). Today seems a perfect one to begin it.

But first, I am sharing my first fashion post. My boyfriend is the drummer in a rock band based out of Nashville, and because he’s something of a celebrity at the shows he plays in town, I like to really go all out, fashion-wise, for the occasion. A few Saturdays ago, they sold out Exit/In, and I wore this:

so summery

Actually, if I tell the whole story, this was my sister’s dress. She bought it on one of our favorite websites, but it didn’t fit her. Her loss was my gain, though; as much as she despised it, she gave the dress to me to wear. This is what it looked like the night of the show:

As a relatively tall girl at 5’10”, I was for a long time pretty self-conscious about my height. I slouched and wore flats, which was about as much compensation as I could come up with, but it worked. Then, in high school, I dated this guy that was a glorious 6’4″. It was liberating. I looked petite for the first time, next to this giant dude. It was fantastic. I bought my first real pair of heels within the first week of dating him. After we broke up (it was probably only a few weeks later; my high school dating life was extremely punctuated), I was devastated – not about the guy, but about the heels(!) – for approximately one minute. Enter, my first feminist thought, which was also quite liberating: I can wear heels by myself. Ta-da! Yes, I often end up scaling six feet or more in heels, but I’m so over being embarrassed. And now, look at me! I bought these shoes the other day: